Photovoltaic (PV) installations may include a large number of components and wide variety of devices. A PV installation may include one or more arrays of PV generators (e.g. solar modules, solar cells, solar panels), one or more inverter(s), communication devices, and PV power devices such DC/DC converters, DC-AC microinverters, combiner boxes, and Maximum-Power-Point-Tracking (MPPT) devices. Some installations may further include batteries. Some of the electronic modules may be integrated with the PV modules and may provide other functions such as monitoring of performance and/or protection against theft. In case of the system experiencing power loss or in case of a potentially unsafe condition, it may be desirable for a system maintenance operator to physically locate a particular device (e.g. solar panel, DC-DC converter or micro-inverter) that may be potentially responsible for the power loss or potentially unsafe condition.
Operators and monitoring bodies of PV installations might not always have access to a map which indicates the location of each PV module, identified by a serial number. In such cases, troubleshooting problems may be time consuming, since locating a specific module, e.g., a malfunctioning module, may be difficult. In other instances, a map of the installation may be obtained by significant manual effort, such as a maintenance worker walking through the installation and copying ID numbers off modules, denoting their location on a map. If performed manually, human error may also cause inaccurate information to be recorded in the maps.
There is a need for an automatic or semi-automatic method of generating physical maps of PV installations, to save work and reduce errors, while allowing system monitoring personnel to obtain the benefits of having a map which indicates the locations and ID numbers of PV modules.